From one of Britain's most popular toys to the target of police raids: how a children's doll became a symbol of racism
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- A police raid on a bar just outside of London renewed a debate over racist dolls.
- The dolls, historically known as "golliwogs," have long divided opinion in British society.
- Insider has put together a brief history of the controversial figures.
A police raid on a pub just outside of London has reignited a debate on one of Britain's most controversial toys.
Police officers seized several dolls, known as "golliwogs" or "gollies," from the White Hart Inn, in Grays, Essex, last week as part of a hate crime investigation following a complaint.
The pub's landlady, Benice Ryley, has insisted that the dolls aren't racist, while her husband, Christopher Ryley, is under further investigation for a Facebook comment on a photo of the dolls hanging on a wooden beam, saying: "They used to hang them in Mississippi years ago," in an apparent reference to Mississippi lynchings.
But Benice Ryley's refusal to accept the idea that the dolls are racist seems to be symptomatic of the British public's divided opinion on the dolls and perhaps reflects a lack of understanding of the history surrounding the figures.
As one of the lesser-known racist figures in the US, Insider has put together a brief history of how they went from beloved childhood dolls to symbols of racism.
"A horrid sight, the blackest gnome"
The character was originally created by the British-American author and illustrator Florence Kate Upton.
In her 1895 book, "The Adventures of Two Dutch Dolls," Upton first introduced her "Golliwogg" character, describing the doll as "a horrid sight, the blackest gnome," according to David Pilgrim, the founder of the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia.
Pilgrim said that the doll, which is the "least known of the major anti-black caricatures in the United States," was a "grotesque" representation of Black people, usually presented "with very dark, often jet black skin, large white-rimmed eyes, red or white clown lips, and wild, frizzy hair."
The physical version of the doll, and its presence in children's literature, became increasingly popular and commoditized across Britain throughout the 20th century, and it was found on postcards and pins and used as marketing for a best-selling jam, among other things.
The dolls also gained popularity in Australia and the US in the 1970s.
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The connection to the racist image evoked by the doll and American minstrels — a form of blackface performance developed in the 19th century — is clear. That "sentimentalized plantation slavery as humorous and perhaps even desirable," according to Alexander Scott, a researcher and assistant curator at the International Slavery Museum in Liverpool.
Even the use of the dehumanizing terminology is contentious, some argue for using the word in full in order to not shy away from its racist history, while others shorten the phrase to avoid its full impact.
Scott told Insider it was "really jarring to see racial epithet used so liberally" in coverage of the issue, and there should be a concerted effort to de-normalize the term.
Perpetuating racist stereotypes
The term has historically been used as a racial slur across Europe, and there have been many accounts of the painful experiences of Black children encountering the images.
In British historian David Olusoga's book "Black and British," he recounts a time when a girl brought her blackface doll into school in the 1970s and was "plunged into a day of humiliation and pain."
He said it was difficult to see the word as "benign" after a note with the word wrapped around a brick was thrown into his family's window.
But despite the long history of the racist trope, the debate over the doll's place in British culture continues.
They are still sold online as collectible items, although sellers like eBay and Etsy have recently removed the "offensive" items from their listings. Some museums in the UK have also removed the dolls from their displays, while others have refused despite complaints.
In 2009, the Queen's Sandringham Estate also apologized and stopped selling the dolls that were "causing offense" after the daughter of Margaret Thatcher, a former British Prime Minister, was fired from her job at the BBC for using the slur to refer to a professional tennis player.
Changing attitudes?
REUTERS/Henry Nicholls
Grappling with racist symbols and imagery is indeed cross-Atlantic, as reflected in the changes made to rice packaging in the US or questions about the appropriateness of using images of Native Americans as sports mascots.
The connections made to nostalgia — or "childhood history" — by those in favor of the doll's continued presence hints at a rejection of "political correctness," as well as the "British tendency to think about slavery as something that happened in the American South, rather than Britain being one of the main protagonists," Scott said.
But it does appear that there is some gradual shift in public opinion happening with the dolls.
A snap survey of 3,000 people conducted by YouGov for Tim Bale, a professor of politics at Queen Mary University, London, found that 27% thought it was racist to sell or display a golliwog doll, up from 20% in a similar survey in 2017, while 48% thought it was not racist, which was down from 63%.
Nevertheless, the enduring popularity of the blackface doll creates the impression "that we live in a post-racial society," Scott said.
Their continued normalization "denies an incredibly long and painful history," he added.
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